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Language code: is

Technical information about ISO 639 language code is

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Icelandic language, designated by the is code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

is

Name

Official

Icelandic

Native

Íslenska

Family
Germanic
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
Northern IcelandicSouthern Icelandic
Related languages
FaroeseNorwegian (Nynorsk)Old Norse
Key facts
Modern Icelanders can read medieval sagas with relative ease due to the language’s conservatismThe Icelandic language committee routinely coins native neologisms such as “tölva” for “computer”The alphabet retains unique letters ð, þ, æ and öMost Icelanders use patronymic or matronymic surnames instead of fixed family namesVoiceless stops are frequently pre-aspirated, giving Icelandic a distinctive sound
Sample phrase

Halló, hvernig hefur þú það?

Character encodings

ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-10, ISO 8859-15, UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Icelandic belongs to the Indo-European language family, more specifically to the Germanic subgroup. It is the official language in Iceland and is written using the Latin script, specifically the Icelandic alphabet. It is estimated that there are more than 300,000 speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

Iceland

300K

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Icelandic speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

Related locale codes

is-IS – Icelandic (Iceland)

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